Friday, July 21, 2017

​ My Miami 1980 research has led to a Miami Herald story: "The tumultuous Mariel refugee influx of 1980 is back in the news — this time at the core of a roiling debate about whether immigrants hurt less-educated native-born workers. The heated arguments focus on the new work of a Cuban-born Harvard professor, George Borjas, who concludes that Mariel caused a drastic drop in pay among native-born Miami high school dropouts — the majority of whom were black." That story is available HERE. A companion Herald story discusses the discusses the politics of immigration, including Borjas' idea of taxing employers who benefit from cheap immigrant labor and how some progressives cite Borjas in rethinking their stance on immigration. That story can be found HERE.

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

The latest Biscayne Times has my take on the gig economy -- co-working spaces in Miami, the latest manifestation that the old economic world of full-time big corporation jobs with benefits is dying out.

This is what has sparked considerable anger from both young Bernie followers and aging Rust Belt Trumpers: no steady work that earlier generations had been able to count on. As Richard Greenwald, author of "The Death of 9-to-5" puts it: "This is the new normal. It’s going to only intensify, and then the question is: What do you do?”

When I started this story with a quick survey of online articles about co-working, I assumed I’d be seeing long rows of 22-year-olds hunched over laptops dreaming of developing the next Facebook or killer app. But after visiting eight Miami co-working sites, I’ve seen that the reality tends more toward immigrants in their mid-30s promoting non-tech businesses